Female Rowers with their Cute Purses

Talking about rowers’ knees and legs, as HTBS did yesterday, well, male ones, it is time to show some female rowers in shorts. However, the most interesting thing with this photograph, depicting some young women carrying their oars down to the River Thames in London in 1939, is the women’s cute little purses. Do you think that these women are vain, bringing their purses with lipstick, face powder, a little mirror perhaps and…? Well, you are wrong. They are only trying to save their lives - in their cute purses are gas masks.

Groovy, R&R

I know that this is way overdue for those of you living in Great Britain, but today I received my copy of British Rowing's magazine Rowing & Regatta, the June/July issue. Of course, some of the articles feel 'old', all the preview pieces of the World Cup II at Eton Dorney, for example, but it is my own fault for living far away. My favourite article, however, is Martin Cross's piece "Legends of Nottingham" about the bands that played at Nottingham RC between 1962 and 1981. You name a great blues or rock legend or band, and they were probably playing there - incredible! I am happy to add this knowledge to HTBS's 'oddities', which gives rowing history that little extra dimension.

If you have not seen this copy, contact immediately British Rowing, R&R, to get your own copy, here.

Photograph for this article from Cross's article in R&R.

A 'Roadsculler' Race in 1888

Surfing the web for some information, I came across this interesting ad for a 'Roadsculler' Race on 7 October, 1888. The fourteen Champion Oarsmen are all professionals and the sport heroes of the day. On the day of the race, twelve of them did race, James Ten Eyck and John Teemer not competing. The 'sculler' was not easy to manoeuvre and never became a success. You will find a race report from The Sun (New York) here.  Sport Illustrated had an article about this race in March 1977, read that article here.

Pay The Rowing Journalists The Big Bucks!

On Wednesday, 25 July, BBC One in Great Britain and BBC America in the USA will broadcast the film Bert and Dickie (oddly called Going for Gold– The ’48 Games on BBC America). There has been a buzz about this film ever since it became known that Matt Smith (who plays Doctor Who) was going to be Bert Bushnell in the film. One of the latest interviews with Smith is found in the British TV magazine What’s on TV. Reading this article, I understand why rowing journalists and correspondents should be paid the big bucks, as they say here in America. (Well, they are not…)

Why, do you ask? Because a rowing journalist would not ask, or spell, a question like this: "How did you get on with the specially designed, two-man skull rowing boats?"

If you still would like to read the interview, you will find it here.

Humbug!

A gentleman's socks!

The Daily Telegraph writes in an article that a new book, Gentlemen’s Pursuits, has been examining the pages of the British magazine Country Life to be able to present a new list of what makes a gentleman and how his interests have changed from what a 1912 gentleman was interested in. Personally, I think that there is a mix-up here between a ‘gentleman’ and a ‘celebrity’, which is a pity. In the 2012 list of gentlemen is for example David Beckham, for his good manners, but although Beckham maybe is a perfectly nice fellow, he is not a gentleman.

To compare the attributes of the 1912 gentleman to the 2012 gentleman, here are a few examples:

1912 / 2012
Rolls-Royce / Land Rover Discovery
Moustache / Clean-shaven
Cigarettes / Nicorette
Rudyard Kipling / Antony Beevor
Claret / New Zealand Pinot Noir
Scotland in August / Scotland in August
Manservant / No servant
Kedgeree / Muesli with blueberries
Dining room / Kitchen
Ironed newspaper / Today
English setter / Black labrador
Whist / BBC Ten O’Clock News
White tie / No tie
Catching lots of salmon in Scotland / Catching no salmon in Scotland

It made me happy to see that of the very few things that has not changed in these two lists, which is one hundred years apart, is Henley [Royal Regatta] - it's on both lists!

However, among the things that a 2012 gentleman would never do is take a Holiday in Florida (very understandable), but it also says that he would never wear pink socks! I beg your pardon? That would mean that a lot of the gentlemen at Leander Club are not... well, gentlemen. Preposterous, I say. It just shows that the 2012 list is humbug!

(To Say Nothing Of The Dog)

Is it 'J', Harris, George, and Montmorency sculling during the River Pageant?

One of the great things with running HTBS is the contact with you readers. It might be a comment for one of the blog posts, or just a short e-mail with a question or even a pat on the shoulder. Yesterday, Fraser from England sent an e-mail saying that in a nice photograph by Tim K., in his coverage of the Thames Diamond Jubilee Pageant (posted on 4 June), Fraser found his own skiff. While the good Tim sent Fraser a photograph of his boat, Tim noticed another skiff on the port side of Fraser’s with a cute dog (see above).

I do not know if the terrier’s name is Montmorency, but at least Fraser informed me that the crew in the skiff is from Vesta Rowing Club and that ‘the terrier has his own bowl in the club bar’. See, I have always thought that the English were such dog lovers!

Rowing Nobel Prize Winners?

Yesterday, 10 December, Row2k.com posted the photograph above by Chris Kingston, and as a Swede I can not help stealing it as it was the Nobel Prize festivity on Saturday. Kingston writes about the blade: “I found this at the Nobel Museum in Stockholm, Sweden. It’s a decorative oar for a crew made up entirely of Cambridge University Nobel Prize winners.” This made me think if there has ever been a Nobel Prize winner who early in his, or her, life had been a rower. I can only come up with one name - Teddy Roosevelt. Do you know any others? Send an e-mail to gbuckhorn-at-gmail.com if you do!

2011 Red Bull XRow - A Race In Hell

There is no question about it, Red Bull XRow, a 18-kilometre rowing race and 7-kilometre running race with your 100-kilogram heavy eight on your shoulder, is a race in Pain. It must be the hardest rowing race in the world. This year’s race, from Zug to Lucerne, was won by Swiss Selection with Frankfurter RG Germania in second place and Seeclub Zürich coming in on third place.

Girl With Oar Too Sexy For Stalin…

“Girl with an Oar” being installed in Gorky Park (click on the arrow on the lower left to start the video).

Right now a wave of nostalgia for Soviet cultural icons goes through the Russian people, wrote Richard Boudreaux in The Wall Street Journal yesterday. One example is the statue “Girl with an Oar”, which was sculpted by one of Josef Stalin’s favourite artists, Ivan Shadr. In 1934, Shadr’s 23-foot nude statue was erected in Gorky Park, which was created in 1928, where it became the park’s centerpiece. However, the Soviet dictator had second thoughts about its nudity, so it was shipped off to Ukraine, where it vanished.

Shadr made a second nude statue which was more in line with the contemporary ‘Socialist realism’ - softer, less muscular, more feminine - and it was followed by many copies of girls holding oars all over the Soviet Union, with, as Boudreaux puts it in his article, they were “clad in swimwear or track suits” as “vacuous imitations made by minor sculptors playing it safe with censors.”

Ivan Shadr died in 1941, the same year German bombings of Moscow destroyed the “Girl with an Oar” in Gorky Park. Nevertheless, he had had a smaller-size plaster version made which his widow cast in bronze in the 1950s, which was kept in Moscow’s Tretyakov, a large storage place of Russian art. It was there the Russian Rowing Association, in a hunt led by Yulia Anikeyeva, a two-time Soviet rowing champion and executive director of the Association, tracked it down.

The Russian Rowing Association, which now has made the “Girl with an Oar” its symbol, has had a 6-foot-7-inch copy made of the sculpture. It will be unveiled today, Saturday, at an annual rowing regatta on the Moscow River, by Gorky Park. The Russian Rowing Association has not missed the opportunity to hype the event, and has, as the article in The Wall Street Journal said, “hired a veteran Playboy photographer to produce a photo exhibit of seven leggy Russian actresses and other celebrities holding oars in various poses. All the models are clothed, some just barely.”



Read Richard Boudreaux article here (where you will also find a slide-show with old photographs of the “Girl with an Oar” and Ivan Shadr, and the ‘leggy’ Russian celebrities).

Rowing To Bled....

Here is a funny thing I first saw on Chris P.'s eminent blog, Rowing for Pleasure.

Not even at the airport in Munich, on their way to the 2011 World Championships in Bled, Sovenia, did Great Britain’s heavy men’s eight get some rest. Practice, practice….



The video is featuring Phelan Hill, Dan Richie, Tom Ransley, Greg Searle, Moe Sbihi, Alex Partridge, James Foad, Cam Nichol, Nathaniel Reilly-O’Donnell, and Marcus Bateman. Video done with some help from Pete Reed.

You can follow the team via Nathaniel Reilly-O’Donnell’s blog.

This video was also shown on The Daily Telegraph’s website and on The Sun's website.

Rowing Skill Events & Rowing Relay Races

Today, I read a short article about a rowing discipline that I have never heard of when it comes to competition: Rowing Skills Event. The article (in English) was in a newspaper in Quebec, Canada, Laval News. The article, with the head-line “Alexandre Richard wins Quebec’s first rowing skills event”, begins,

“Laval native, Alexandre Richard won the Men’s Single at la Rencontre Amicale des Jeunes du Club d’aviron de Laval. It’s a new thing in Quebec - a competition which combines a skills event with a conventional straight line race. Richard rowed his skill section in 4:02,70 minutes and his straight race in 2:28,07 minutes for a total of 6:30,77 minutes.”

The article goes on by saying that the competition had twenty-five young rowers sculling in single sculls, double sculls, and quadruple sculls showing boatmanship as they had to row forward, backward, stop, turn around a buoy, etc. The manager of the Laval Rowing Club, Mr. Daniel Aucoin, is saying that this form of competition is “better known in Europe”, which is news to me, but I have to agree that it’s a great way for children and youths to learn boating skills. Read the article by clicking here.

So how is it done? It seems the crews row 50 metres to a buoy, turn 180 degrees, back up to another buoy to touch it with their boat’s stern. Then they race 50 metres, turn 180 degrees and row slalom between some coloured buoys, turn 180 degrees again, and row 50 metres with square oar blades.

Laval R.C. has posted a “skill contest” on YouTube, which I have borrowed here:



To read more about Laval R.C. click here.

Talking about other rowing competitions for children: when I was the regatta secretary at the Hjelmsjön Regatta, in the south of Sweden, we ended the regatta with a relay race for juniors in single sculls. Three teams/clubs would compete against each other at the same time, each team using two lanes, every junior sculling 100 metres. You start the three teams’ scullers 100 metres from the finish line so they race toward the finish line. At the finish line, their three team mates are waiting for them to cross the line, so that they can scull their 100 metres toward the start. When they pass the 100-metre-mark, the third member of their team will scull towards the finish line. Of course, older juniors can row longer distances, and in any boat type. It was much appreciated by the young rowers, their coaches, families and friends, and the other spectators, who saw the whole 3x100-metre race by standing at the finish line.

Rowing Skill Events and Rowing Relay Races - there are a lot of fun things for children to do at a regatta! It is up to the regatta organisers to make it happen!

Roll Those Reels...

HTBS has often use newsreels from British Pathé, which actually was founded as Société Pathé Frères in Paris in the 1890s, to show old crews of Oxford and Cambridge practicing or racing, and when the professional scullers were battling for a championship, and sometimes an oddity like girls rowing on a roof top or London RC doing their 'jazz rowing'. Whether you are a rower or not, British Pathé's treasure trove has something for everyone.

Right now BBC Four is showing a documentary series about the company, The Story of British Pathé. The first programme was shown on 18 August, "The Birth of the News", and three more programmes are to follow. Read more about the series here. (Unfortunately, the iPlayer do not allow viewer outside Britain - or maybe outside of Europe - to watch). To read The Daily Telegraph's review of the first programme, please click here.

Of course, now I have to show a couple of newsreels. I have picked two which show the same rowing 'oddity' (but it is still rowing!), gondolas, which has two 'celebrety' gondolier, Ernest Barry (in 1921) and Humphrey Bogart (in 1951)!

ACTION!!!

VENICE ON THAMES

VENICE

Poke Around!

Rowing historian William Lanouette is right now in San Diego, enjoying morning rows at the San Diego Rowing Club, he told me in an e-mail. He also sent me a link to a great on-line library of sports books. Having tried several rowing related search words in the whole library, or specific publications, I encourage the HTBS’s readers to take a deep look into this library, or to quote the good Bill, “Poke around and have some fun!”

Here is the link.

(So, what has the lady on the tired-pumping rowing machine to do with this entry? Nothing really, but I found it when I was poking around for an image to go with this post. Funny, I thought...)

Happy Easter!

HAPPY EASTER EVERYONE!

... And Counting

Today, Monday 4 April, 2001, the sitemetre for HTBS passed 50,000 (and this is counting the visits made since 12 March 2010). I am taking this count as an indicator that we at HTBS is doing something right!

Boris Will Address The Blues

On Monday 7 March, the Mayor of London, Boris Johnson, will address the Oxford and Cambridge crews who will be rowing in The Boat Race on 26 March. The oarsmen will weighed in at City Hall and the Mayor will acknowledge that it is 175 years since the university crews first raced on the River Thames in London. Read the press release here.

Who is Boris Johnson, a Non-Brit may ask? Boris Johnson, a Conservative politician, is a former MP (Member of Parliament) for Henley-on-Thames who has been Mayor of London since May 2008. He studied at Eton College and Balliol College, Oxford, and at neither school he rowed, which was obvious when he, as the MP for Henley, opened the Upper Thames RC's new boathouse in 2005 (see picture below from the 'Tideway Slug').

He is one of the few British politicians known around the country on a first-name basis, and his unruly hair and far from tactful outspokenness are some of his trademarks, as is his badly tied neck-ties, I think. In Britain, he is either loved, or regarded as a babbling fool who constantly puts his foot in his mouth. Boris has worked as a journalist for the Conservative Daily Telegraph, where he still has a column. Between 1999 and 2005 he was the editor of the weekly magazine The Spectator.

Rowing On Ice

Yesterday, I saw this funny video about 'Ice Rowing' in Finland on Chris Partridge's eminent blog Rowing for Pleasure. I cannot help stealing it from him as I talked to my dear mother in the south of Sweden yesterday and she said they have tons of snow already! It's a funny thing, just because I am from Sweden everyone here in New England thinks that I love the winter and snow. Sorry, I never loved the snow in Sweden, and I don't love the snow in Connecticut. However, if I had the chance to try some 'ice sculling' I would for sure take it!

Williams's Quintuple Dirt Cheap

Tim Koch, HTBS special correspondent in London, reports that “The five-person sculling boat built by Carl Douglas for the recent Robbie Williams / Take That video reported on the 22 November has been sold on eBay after a twelve person bidding war for £3,800 ($5,900). Part of the money raised will go to support youth rowing. This was a bargain for the winner as it is less than the price of a decent single scull. Of course there is only one other boat in existence that it can race…”

Thank you, Tim, for keeping the HTBS readers updated!

High Spirits

Here is an ad that I found in an old publication, British Rowing Almanack 1957, which was the 'Official Handbook of the Amateur Rowing Association, the Scottish Amateur Rowing Association and the Women's Amateur Rowing Association, with notes on companion Associations overseas' as it states inside the publication. It was edited by A.S. Irvine and published by C.E. Fisher & Co. (Publishers) Ltd. in London. The men seem to be in high spirits. It must be due to being oarsmen...

Put A Bid In For William's Quintuple

Good Tim Koch sent me an e-mail earlier today pointing towards some interesting rowing stuff on eBay. Up for sale is the five-person sculling boat - a quintuple - built by Carl Douglas Racing Shells for the band Take That’s “The Flood”, which has become a smashing hit. You might already have watched the DVD here on HTBS (if not, click here). The shell, with the name ‘Progress’, was specially created by Carl Douglas for this DVD, which marks Robbie William’s return to Take That. When I am writing this there is six more days to go before the auction ends. Right now the bid is £1,500.00 (reserve not met). Hurry up to put a bid in for this unique boat. If you would win, a part of the money will support “youth and grass root rowing” in England. Read more about it on eBay’s site. Good luck with your bid!